4-9-16 Take Your Pick N,S,E, or W

Thursday through Saturday, April 7-9th
...something strange/unusual or just plain foggy occurred each of these last three days...
...April 7th - out looking for whales on Peregrine with Capt. Jim...a man on an island hailed us over to ask for assistance (he was fine he needed a part for his boat)...problem is we are on a U.S. boat and we were in Canadian waters so we could not moor the boat...Capt. Jim was able to get information to someone in Canada to assist him...never had that happen before...
...we keep going...off to the east in the U. S....Mt. Baker with fog along the water...pretty, but fog was not something we wanted to see...

...we kept searching...and then we hear, "contact"!...it might have been the assist boat that spotted the whales...

...it was two family groups of transients...the T123s with three members, and the T49As with four members...a few images from the day...

...this one unusual and weird...the two males T49A1 and T123A...

...early the next morning whales were spotted coming west in Spieden Channel...we were going out at 9:30 because the wind was supposed to pick up in the afternoon...the entire island had lost power in the night...no coffee, no showers, no nothing...and no fuel docks with power for fueling up boats - yikes!...the trip was certainly starting out as an adventure...by the time it was all worked out - that in itself was rather wild...the 'trail' of those whales was cold...but try we would...
...Dave from the Center for Whale Research had come out and was taking the west side of Haro Strait and we, on Peregrine with Capt. Andy went up on the east side...traveling at a steady and moderate speed was perfect for scanning...Dave called to say he thought he saw some blows but a ship had just passed by leaving a huge wake...a few minutes later both boats saw them at just about the same time - "contact"! 
...it was the same whales as the day before, the T123s and the T49As traveling slow and steady up Boundary Pass...

...then we get to Saturday, the 9th...fog, fog, and more fog...
...one of the Victoria boats 'stumbled upon' some whales while they were heading out in the morning toward San Juan Island...but lost them in the fog...as much as we searched, to no avail...people were hearing them over the Lime Kiln hydrophones (link to the Lime Kiln hydrophones top/left column on this blog), intermittently for close to an hour.
...then by the afternoon the fog had lifted and the whales, the T18s were spotted a couple miles off the south end of San Juan Island...by the time we got down that way those same whales had gone up San Juan Channel and fast!...they were already passed Friday Harbor by the time we got there...
...there are four whales in the T18 group...two were traveling close to the island and the other were spread out a bit and were far off shore...

...they eventually came together but only after what appeared to be, either T18 or T19C having a passing kerfuffle with a Steller sea lion...
...the whales continued on but the sea lion was acting strangely...and came over to the boat...the sea lion swam around the boat, rolling around under but close to the surface...he appeared to be using us for possible protection...seen this type of behavior in the past...soon he moved away and so did we...

...one day transients were on the west side of the islands, the next on the north side of the islands, and the third day on the south and over and up the east side of the islands...surrounded :) 






...and the J17s and the J22s...well they were still in Puget Sound today...and so far, no word, as far as I know, on the rest of J Pod...and the answer as to why continues to loom on the horizon...